The Mad Parson

It’s an axiom now that reasonable debate is as rare as Lady Gaga in Talbot’s finest pantsuit. Glenn Beck, Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow, and Pat Buchanan have all profited handsomely on demonizing their opponents with prejudice, while prognosticating the demise of America if their political ideology doesn’t win the day. Entire outlets have taken on political bias. MSNBC, New York Times, CNN, and others raise the liberal banner; Fox News, Orange County Register, and Washington Times do likewise for the conservative cause. Even handed, reasoned discourse is getting harder to find.

I don’t read newspapers, and I don’t watch much television, but I have found a few resources that are handy in forming opinions. The first is the Holy Bible. Heh, heh. While that might not sound like the most obvious source of news, the most influential Protestant theologian since the Reformation itself, Karl Barth, once quipped that Christians should think with the Bible in one hand and a newspaper in the other. (I suppose the slogan could be, in that case, “We report, God decides”?)As for news media, I took Harper’s for a long time, but discontinued it because it became so predictable. If abortion or Iraq graced Harper’s cover any given month, you already knew where the story was going. But I have continued my subscription to Atlantic Monthly, which I began as an undergraduate. The Atlantic is evenhanded, thoughtful, and broad. The editor, James Fallows, has lived in China the past three years and has much to offer on Sino-American relationships. In addition, he is a sharp media critic, having written Breaking the News: How the Media Undermine American Democracy in the Nineties. The Atlantic’s online site is pretty good, too, with a bevy of bloggers that run the ideological gamut.

The Economist is also an informative and rational read, and really should be on every thoughtful American’s reading list, says me. Careful and incisive in its writing and thinking,The Economist has a global gaze that most Americans could use. Its online site is quite good, as well, with a debate section that tackles thorny questions from both angles. Currently, there is a moderated debate on whether Obama’s presidency is failing. Definitely worth checking out.

Speaking of online: Instapundit is a libertarian blog that mixes dry humor with political and economic news (as well as wonky stuff like space travel and automobile goings-on). If you want decidedly ideological, but apartisan aggregation, couple The Daily Caller with The Huffington Post. Somewhere in the middle lies truth.

Three more aggregate blogs, Real Clear Politics, Real Clear Markets, and Real Clear World offer pretty much anything you want to know on those respective issues.

The only Big Media person I read is Jake Tapper of ABC News. His blog, Political Punch is a great example of a journalist keeping the powers-that-be on their toes in an informative and respectful manner.

And if you’ve got the time, Blogging Heads TV hosts approximately one hour video debates on the hot topics of the day. Two experts on a topic, representing the liberal and conservative bents, usually, go head to head with calm and informed discourse. Meaty, but a real commitment time-wise.

Anyhoo. I think these are solid resources for forming opinions–or keeping your opinions challenged if they’re already formed! If you have resources you find helpful in this continuing effort, post them in the comment section below. . . .

Northminster’s own Kendall Kelly was interviewed for a local newscast, whereupon she got to show off her mad sledding skills. Kendall shows up at about the 0:33 mark:

Careful. There’s a bit of dicey language there at the end:

Wow. Besides just coming across as petulant, it boggles the mind how a group of young hipsters thinks that they are promoting health care by sleeping around with people who agree with them, and thereby increase the chances of STDs, pregnancies, abortions, and other sex-related issues that will, you know, put more pressure on the health care delivery system.

If you really want to help the health care delivery system out some, how ’bout keeping your pants zipped up? I know, I know. Suggesting that we humans can actually go an hour or two without sex is fantastic in our current cultural climate–as indicated by the fellow at the end of the video who just can’t bear the thought. But abstinence in singleness and monogamy in marriage really is possible. And it just might be healthy, too. Who knew?

Well, the people who just published a report in the Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine do. The results of the study are that abstinence-only education programs can be a productive way of cutting down on sexual activity, and consequently unwanted pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases.

Abstinence is usually associated with some prig Church Lady-ish ideology that wants to curb everybody’s fun and scold everyone for being human. That association couldn’t be farther from the mark. As I’ve written elsewhere, God doesn’t sit around writing rules because the premiere of Lost isn’t until later tonight and he’s bored out of his mind. No, the directives we have concerning our behavior are descriptions of what a healthy and sustainable community looks like. And running around engaging in profligate sexual behavior doesn’t create that type of community. It ends up with heartache, health issues, pregnancies or abortions, and a general sense of narcissism that borders on solipsism.

What’s that, you say? You don’t want the federal government telling people what to do in the bedroom? Fine by me. But that cuts across the board. If you don’t want federal dollars going to abstinence programs, then don’t send any to the contraceptive-based programs, either. You can’t have it both ways. Indeed, probably the best idea is a federalist approach where states get to decide from themselves how they want to approach sex ed. Let’s monitor that one over a decade and see which system works best.

I suspect I know how that will end. Abstinence takes more discipline, it takes more community involvement, and it fights a long fight against the prevailing culture. But if you want to build a stronger community, if you want to help out with health care costs, if you want to participate in something bigger than yourself, then the guaranteed way to accomplish those things is to hold out. Period.

You know the story of John 8, even if you don’t know it’s in John 8:

Early in the morning he came again to the temple. All the people came to him and he sat down and began to teach them. The scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in adultery; and making her stand before all of them, they said to him, ‘Teacher, this woman was caught in the very act of committing adultery. Now in the law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?’ They said this to test him, so that they might have some charge to bring against him. Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground. When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, ‘Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.’ And once again he bent down and wrote on the ground. When they heard it, they went away, one by one, beginning with the elders; and Jesus was left alone with the woman standing before him. Jesus straightened up and said to her, ‘Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?’ She said, ‘No one, sir.’ And Jesus said, ‘Neither do I condemn you. Go your way, and from now on do not sin again.’

While all of Scripture is beneficial, not every passage speaks directly to our current situation. Take, for instance, Genesis 29. It certainly has a message for us, but we have to dig a bit to find. We can’t simply follow the precepts of that passage as it is written. If you doubt me on this, try taking multiple spouses for yourself and see how that works!

But the beginning of John 8 imports straight into our experience. We have haughty religious people in our day and age. We have people pushed aside and taken advantage of by society. We have Christ. And the mix of those three elements happens in our midst every day. Sometimes we’re the former. Sometimes we’re the latter. We always need the last.

Before I get into the connection, however, we need a brief digression. (Is there really such a thing as a “brief digression”? Especially when there’s a preacher involved?) God doesn’t sit around writing up lists of sins because there’s snow on the ground and he can’t plant his beloved lantana and heliotrope. And, contrary to popular belief, there is no fixed and established universal moral structure that we conform to at our benefit and oppose at our peril. That idea is Platonic, not Christian.

Sin is what diminishes or hurts the community. God, in his very Trinitarian-ness, is a community unto himself. We, made in the image of God–imago Dei for all you Latinophiles–are also built to be communal, community, communitarian. Sin is anything that breaches or impedes the health and longevity of that community. Lying, for example, isn’t a sin because God one day threw darts at a dart board entitled “New Sins To Punish Rascally Humans For” and his fourth dart hit “Lying”. No, it’s a sin because trust is a necessary component for a strong community, and lying tears that trust asunder.

Okay, you get the idea. Enough–ahem–brief digression. So the question is: How does this story illumine our ideas and treatment of sin? In our current affluent Western climate, we typically address sin one of two ways. The first is to metonymize the sin into the person sinning. That is, we focus so strongly on whatever the person has done to harm the community, that we fail to see anything else in the person’s person. It is much like a physician who is treating a disease and focuses only on that disease, regardless of what other physiological, emotional, relational, spiritual, and other issues may be going on. Let a sixteen year old girl get pregnant and see how many people really harp on her continuing her violin lessons. The pregnancy swallows everything.

This is condemnation. It is letting the sin–again, the diminishing of the community–hang around the person’s neck like a millstone. It binds the person to the sin and adds insult to injury as it also diminishes the community and becomes a sin in its own right.

The other treatment is libertinism, and it usually occurs as a theoretically enlightened reaction to condemnation. In this treatment, sin is dismissively acknowledged–if even that–and the consequences of said sin are stripped away under the guise of tolerance or love or some such. Libertines don’t push our dear little girl to continue her violin lessons, either, but they ignore that sin has consequences, and in doing so, they set the stage for such behavior to be more readily permitted. After all, why not have the dessert if no one is going to make you suffer the calories? Like condemnation, libertinism also glues the sin to the sinner, as libertinism sees no real reason for things like renumeration, expiation, or repentance. Condemnation and libertinism, then, are two sides of the same destructive coin.

Christ is our great Captain who steers us into the harbor of his kingdom in this long suffering navy called the Church. And he does so navigating through the Scylla of condemnation and the Charybdis of libertinism. “Has no condemned you?” “No, sir.” And here’s the key: “Neither do I condemn you. Now, go your way and do not sin again.” Or as some translations render it: “Then neither do I condemn you; now, go your way and sin no more.”

The Condemners relish the latter command, but forget the former acceptance. They stress the no more sinning part, but skip over the cleansing offer of repentance and the unconditional love of grace. The Libertines loudly proclaim the inclusion of the former statement, but condescend toward the stricture of the latter conviction. They welcome everyone, but also welcome everyone’s behavior. Party over here! Party over there!

Christ’s grace moves beyond those poles. It welcomes everyone, but also demands a certain behavior, a behavior that embellishes the community and reflects the nature and character of God. The faithful Christian community welcomes everyone into its midst and treats them with hospitality and equality. After all, in Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek nor male nor female nor rich nor poor nor even Tarheel fan. Everyone is on one level playing field, regardless of makeup, background, or anything else. But not just any behavior will do. In fact, most behaviors won’t do. The community is everything, and sins won’t be tolerated. Sinners will be accepted and even helped to modify their brokenness, but selfishness–which is what sin fundamentally is–will not be coddled.

Imagine what our believing communities looked like if we stridently pursued this belief, this idea that everyone is welcomed in grace and everyone is expected to participate in confession and repentance? “Welcome to this congregation, friend! Here you will find acceptance, but not toleration. Grace, but not excuses. Affirmation, but no enabling. We do not condemn you. Now, go and sin no more. . . . “

The manager thinks we’ll need something “special” to happen in order to win the Premier League title this year:

“We need something special now to stay in the race, of course. I am conscious of that.”

Well, yes we do, Mr. I-Have-A-Degree-In-Economics. We do, indeed. And that something “special” just might be OPENING UP YOUR FRIGGIN’ CHECKBOOK AND BUYING A COUPLE OF KEY PLAYERS, SUCH AS A ‘KEEPER WHO DOESN’T HEMORRHAGE GOALS.

My eleven year old daughter could do a better job of keeping sheets clean, as she is a goalie herself. For a LACROSSE TEAM!

Are you with me here, Mr Wenger, sir? You have always said that the club is bigger than any one person or even one squad. Yet, in the past several seasons, you have placed both the players’ confidence and your own development project ahead of winning trophies.

Perhaps the embarrassment of this weekend will jolt you into your prior manner of thinking, sir. I can only hope so.

Newsweek speculates that Hill may run again against Obama.

Just remember, you heard it here first. . . .

. . .schools Little Boy John.  Brilliant.  Absolutely brilliant.

Because of it’s size, it’s location, it’s topography, and. . .well, the fact that it’s an island, Dominican Republic has a surprising breadth of flora. Arid to semi-arid micro-ecosystems receive little to no rain and consequently bear breathtaking cactii. Punta Cana, where I am presently, is the stereotypical tropical climate, and the flowers here are stunning. Red samana plants, white jasmines, green elephants’ ears, along with hanging vines and flowering trees color the royal palms, mangoes, and coconuts that populate this corner of the island. A first time visitor–such as yours truly–nearly has to take a step back and widen the eyes in order to really take in the spectacle.

Located in the midst of this opulent beauty is the village of Veron, where my wife’s clinic is located. Veron is approximately twenty minutes inland from Punta Cana. Juxtaposed against the natural beauty are buildings made of chipped and sometimes crumbling concrete, painted over multiple times with the names of various political candidates. Men often travel in small groups, and their faces bear the brooding, searching gazes of predators. Trash gathers against the sides of the roadways, and the preferred method of transportation is by motorcycle. A traveler with money will prefer the expensive auto taxis, although legitimacy has to be confirmed. Most use the erratic bus system. But for those without much money–or without the time to wait and hope that the bus arrives–any fellow with a Suzuki dirt bike will gladly take a fee and provide the transportation.

To say that the traffic patterns here are indecipherable would be a bit misleading, because there are no real traffic patterns. None formally established, anyway. Motorists pass each other at will, and often into oncoming traffic. The motorcycles in question zip in and out of traffic, often through the middle of traffic or alongside the shoulder, and the clinic in Veron consequently sees plenty of patients who have been injured in the mosh pit of transportation.

Such recklessness could be a metaphor for the sexual practices of the community. The resorts of Bavaro and Punta Cana are nearby and each resort employees around twelve hundred persons. Needless to say, hospitality is the main employer of the inhabitants of Veron, and with that comes a degree of transience. Couple that with a degree of poverty and all the education and relational issues that go along with it, and it is no real surprise that marriage is usually temporary and out-of-wedlock childbirth is the norm.

To wit: The HIV percentage for Dominican Republic as a whole is 0.8%. For the district where the clinic operates, which covers Punta Cana, Bavaro, Veron, and a couple of other towns, it is 1.0%. In Veron itself, the rate vacillates between four and five percent. The clinic has a wing devoted to HIV treatment and those medications are free. The clinic doesn’t bother to treat other STDs specifically: The others are in such abundance that the clinic simply hands out an STD cocktail that covers all the major diseases. Recently, a sixteen year old girl returned to the clinic to receive the results of her HIV test. She opened the results and begin shrieking, en espanol, “It’s negative! It’s negative! I don’t have it!” Sadly, the staff simply wondered how long the reprieve would last.

It is, again, a conflation of beauty and horror, feast and famine. The people are so gracious, the land so beautiful, the politics relatively stable. This country has so much to offer. And yet, much like an attractive Latina woman, the country still suffers from a past misuse, and is still learning how to cope and move beyond.

Yesterday, I wrote that Latin America is a place of beauty and horror. One of the many reasons for that is the vast gulf between rich and poor. There is really no middle class to speak of: The uber-wealthy live in gated communities sequestered from the abject poor. Last night, my wife and I took a shuttle over to Punta Club Resort & Club–a luxury resort that caters to upper eschelon Americans and Europeans. The beaches are sculpted, the residences are beyond comfortable, and the staff are almost annoying in attending to the guests’ every need. ‘Coddled’ doesn’t even begin to describe it.

And this, juxtaposed against, just off the campus, quasi-shanty towns. An example of the conditions: In America, for our water to be used for anything, it has to be equal to or less than a 1 to 1,000 ratio of fecal matter to water. The ratio here, depending upon where you are in the area, is between 150 and 500 to 1,000. That includes drinking water. (This, of course, is my excuse for sticking to Coke in the morning and the national lager in the evening.) Street markets abound, where fresh meat is hung in the open for human and beast both to partake.

The problems seen in the clinic where my wife works are, alas, the usual: Low birth rate in babies, infections, venereal diseases. The norm here is that girls begin getting pregnant between sixteen and eighteen years of age. Alcoholism is high. Literacy is low. That being said, Haitians routinely emigrate to Dominican Republic for a better life–and that, before the earthquake. What a commentary on Haiti that near-squalor conditions are deemed a better alternative. The clinic here has been slow this week, because around sixty percent of the patients are usually Haitians, and they have traveled to the border to inquire of their families and attempt to send renumerations to them. Almost everyone here has a story to tell about family in Haiti. Patrick is a hyperactive and jovial fellow who works as the clinic translator. He speaks French, French Creole, Spanish, and English fluently. Patrick is fun and helpful, but the attentive person will notice that he has a crafty streak, as well–a street savviness that one suspects is borne of having to survive some tricky environments. Patrick has lost two cousins in the earthquake, and those are the ones he knows about. Saddened, yes, but also, Patrick seems resigned to such news, as though this is what you learn to live with in an underdeveloped land. My maternal great-grandmother had thirteen children, because the family was poor, some of those would die, and as many hands were needed on the farm as she could bear. She lived long enough for me to know her well, and she spoke of the children she lost with fondness, but without sentimentality, and certainly without melancholy. We are generations removed from such fortitude in America, and I’m not even sure that fortitude approaches what these people encounter daily.

And yet, joy is not rare here. Dominoes is the game of choice, and even as the folks here are bemoaning news of their loved ones, they laugh heartily, drink Presidente (the above mentioned national beer), and take from life whatever mercy is granted to them. When you are well acquainted with suffering, the graces in life must taste all the sweeter. Perhaps, at least on this front, the Dominicans have something to teach us Americans.